Jim Laker’s incredible performance on a sticky dog of an Old Trafford pitch gave England an unassailable 2-1 lead in the Ashes series. Photograph: Hulton Getty

It is 31 July 1956. Old Trafford, Manchester. Len Maddocks is rapped on the pad and, after a pregnant pause, Emrys Davies comes out of his squat and jabs his finger towards the batsman. After more than 150 second-innings overs, England have finally sealed victory and the exhausted bowler takes his sweater from the umpire and strides from a pitch now bathed in sunshine. A few team-mates offer hearty handshakes, others a pat on the back in reward for a fine Test’s work. But this has not been merely a fine Test for Jim Laker. From more than 50 years hence the formal congratulations seem almost comically muted, for he is walking off the pitch having taken all 10 Australian wickets in the innings and in doing so recorded the finest bowling figures of all time – 19 for 90.

Laker had already given warning of what John Arlott called his “ruthless destroying vein”. Six years earlier in a trial match against a side of young England hopefuls (which included Peter May, David Sheppard and eight others who would go on to play Test cricket) Laker had been first change at the Pavilion End at Bradford’s Park Avenue ground. In 14 overs of off-spin on the sticky dog of a pitch he conceded two singles. And took eight wickets. The side of England’s best young hopes were all out for 27. Laker’s figures read: 14-12-2-8.

And he had shown that vein again against the Australians in the summer of 1956. On 16 May Surrey had taken on the tourists at The Oval. Laker was handed the ball at 12.20pm on the first day and bowled unbroken until the end of the tourists’ innings, little more than half an hour before the end of play. By that time his figures read 46-18-88-10.

Even so, no one was expecting history to repeat itself in a proper Test. “The odds would be incalculable,” writes Don Mosey in his book, Laker: Portrait of a Legend. “No one, no matter how fertile his imagination, how burning his ambition, how iron-clad his confidence, could possibly visualise such a double. But Jim Laker did it.”

Australia had seen their 19-year hold on the Ashes ended in 1953 and been somewhat battered on home soil by Len Hutton’s tourists in 1954-55. This was not the dominant Australian team of the immediate postwar era, but still one stacked with talent. The first Test at Trent Bridge was a draw, the second, on a seaming green top at Lord’s, went to Australia, but in a rain-affected third Test at Headingley England levelled the series. Laker was certainly troubling the Australians in the wet – his match figures at Leeds read 11 for 113.

But there were, initially at least, mixed views about the pitch at Old Trafford, with one ex-player who scored a run or two in Ashes matches expecting it to be batsman-friendly. The evening before the game, Laker wandered out to take a look at the Old Trafford pitch and bumped into Don Bradman, no longer part of the Australian side but doing some media work during the series. “Flat and slow,” said Bradman. “With plenty of runs on it.”

By the end of the second day, the Australian view of the pitch was very different, but by lunch on day two England accumulated 459 and Australia’s spinners had laboured for a day and a half with very little joy. Ian Johnson had taken four wickets at a cost of 151 runs, Richie Benaud two for 123.

Australia’s reply began steadily, with Colin McDonald and Jimmy Burke putting on 48 for the opening wicket. The England spinners Laker and Tony Lock had been bowling in tandem but had enjoyed as little success as the Australian pair. That was until just before tea, when Peter May opted to switch the pair around, and Laker began bowling from the Stretford End.

McDonald was first to go, bowled Laker, caught Lock, but perhaps the key wicket was the next, that of Neil Harvey. “That Shane Warne delivery that bowled Mike Gatting, well, that wasn’t in the same class,” said Harvey, the left-hander who was clean bowled for a duck by one that pitched on leg and hit the top of off. From round the wicket. “I never faced a better ball than that.”

Brian Scovell, in his biography of Laker, puts forward the theory that with tea coming so soon after that delivery, panic spread like wildfire in the Australian dressing room. Laker said years later that: “I am not being boastful when I said that ball won the series.”

After the break wickets came in a deluge, with Lock taking that of Burke and Laker the other seven. Australia were utterly flummoxed and collapsed from 48 without loss to 84 all out. Laker’s figures read 16.4-4-37-9. England enforced the follow on, but once more Australia dug in to reach 53 for one by the close, the only wicket to fall that of Harvey who, still fuddled by his dismissal less than two hours earlier, patted his first ball, an ugly pie of a full toss, straight to Colin Cowdrey at silly mid-on.

Laker’s achievements in that second day seem to have been a touch overshadowed at the time by the furore surrounding the pitch. Arthur Morris wrote in the Daily Express: “I complain, not on behalf of Australia but on behalf of cricket, that the pitch was not properly prepared for a match of this kind.” Benaud later opined that it was “a terrible pitch but a terrible pitch on which England made 459,” but he also added that the Australian batting in the first innings had been “to put the very best light on it, abysmal”.

Much of the debate at the time and since has surrounded the question of whether the pitch was deliberately doctored to suit England’s spin twins – much of the Australian side were convinced that it had been, though the groundsman Bert Flack long denied it. Even now it is hard to say for sure and, whether there had been skulduggery or not, it should not be allowed to overshadow Laker’s achievement, although it has been suggested that the pitch was inadvertently and needlessly watered in the week prior to the Test.

Still, Laker did at least get the media’s attention too. On Friday evening he boarded the train for Warrington and the team hotel. His wife, Lilly, unaware of his feats at Old Trafford, met him at the snapper-swarmed station platform with the words: “Good Lord – what have you been doing?”

On the following day only 45 minutes were possible because of the rain, but that was all that Laker needed to take the wicket of Burke. Sunday, the rest day, was gloomy and grey but by Monday the rain had ceased, and the uncovered pitch, which had been a dustbowl on the opening two days, was as wet as an otter’s pocket. Cold winds replaced the rain and only an hour’s play was possible with Australia edging to 84 for two.

That gave England only the final day to take eight wickets and with them an unassailable 2-1 lead in the series. Tuesday morning was fine and dry and on a lifeless pitch the tourists added another 28 runs before lunch. Then came the sun and with it the alchemy that turned the track, like that Bradford pitch six years previously, into a sticky dog. “It started on sand and it finished up on mud,” said McDonald of the track. Laker took full advantage.

The collapse was not quite as precipitous as that in the first innings, with Australia this time slumping from 114 for two to 205 all out, but Laker’s bowling remained magical. “There were people trying to get down the track to him, people trying to play him off the back foot, people trying to smother the spin,” said Benaud. “We had thought long and hard about it and we were trying everything we knew.”

It was to no avail. The wickets tumbled to Laker as, at the other end, Lock pushed his deliveries through faster and faster in frustration. “Odd as it may seem now, I did not even consider the possibility of taking all 10 wickets,” said Laker. “How could I when Tony was fizzing the ball through against nine, 10 and jack with venomous lift and spin.” But that fizzing was part of the problem – while Lock bowled too eagerly, Laker maintained his relaxed flow, giving the ball time enough to grip and bounce.

The leg trap snapped shut time and time again, with Alan Oakman and Lock gobbling up five catches between them. Finally, in Laker’s 52nd over, came the 10th, with Maddocks trapped in front. He finished with barely-believable second-innings figures of 51.2-23-53-10 and those epic, history-making match figures of 19 for 90.